treerock.com - the artwork of Gerrit Lansing

In the introduction to his collection of short stories titled River Teeth, David James Duncan weaves an elegant metaphor: our present and past experiences, our existential quests and our memories of what was, are like trees. Our present is a tree standing tall on a riverbank, growing and expanding; our memories are like fallen trees in a river, slowly disintegrating in the river of time. Long after the tree has disintegrated into mud, pieces of hardened pitch - river teeth - remain. These river teeth have resisted the flow of time - like certain memories that resist the same fading - these are our personal river teeth.

I wish to borrow part of Duncan's metaphor. The memories of nature - the memories of time - are all engraved in nature itself. Tree. Rock. Each tells their own story, their history. As our race continues to expand, we will take up more land, use more of nature's resources, and the stories nature tells will be lost. In many ways it is up to us to create nature's river teeth - to pass on the tales of the woods, mountains, lakes, rivers, and seas.

I hope you will discover a tale and take time to listen.

— Gerrit Lansing